It's from 1893 and in Swedish, but it's over 800 pages long and goes into the details of light bulb and arc light design. It makes references to what seems to be every electrical researcher in the world.

Even electricians get their time in the spotlight. Page 502 "The famous electrician Brush has for his house in Cleveland built[...]"

It also contains an historical perspective with a description of the London gas lights.

This could make for reading for ages....

Some of the goodies is that it lists England (Swedes makes no distinction between England and Britain) as using 110V. When the Englishmen installed arc lights, these were typically designed for 45 to 47V and wired in pairs: 45 + 45V = 90V. The 20V difference was dumped with resistors.

It had been introduced by "Interior conduit and insulation company" in New York and now sold in Europe by "S. Bergmann & C:o" in Berlin. These were made of paper impregnated with a molten insulating compound. This made them water resistant and gave smooth surfaces.

This company is engaged in the manufacture of an interior conduit intended for the use in buildings in which electric lighting is installed. The conduits are light, water-proofed and insulated, the purpose thereof being to enclose the wires therein throught the entire lenght of the system within the building. The protection of the wires from accidents of every description by the use of this system, is too obvious to require more than mention. The conduits have come to be looked upon very favourably by the electric companies and by the fire underwriters, and are coming extensively into use.

C-H; English changes too, perhaps not so fast lately. Here's Geoffry Chaucer (1340?-1400), in the 'Prologue to the Canterbury Tales':

A Cook they haddé with hem for the nones*,To boille the chiknés with the marybones,And poudré-marchant tart and galyngale.Wel koud he knowe a draughte of Londoun ale**;

*for the trip- ie he is the Pilgrims' cook, this being about a pilgrimage.** Really strong beer!

And here's Shakespeare 200 years later in 'The Merchant of Venice', written ?1590:

Beg that thou mayst have leave to hang thyself;And yet, thy wealth being forfeit to the state,Thou hast not left the value of a cord;Therefore thou must be hang'd at the state's charge.

Everthing changes; take the word 'nice', now the most used adjective in English: To Chaucer, a 'nyce' man was on idiot, a dolt. [Latin; [i]nescivs[i/]; ignorant.]To Shakepeare, a 'nice' woman was laviscious, sexy, curvy. There are currently over 600,000 English words in the Oxford English Dictionary. You are doing well if you know a tenth of them!

Great those old books.Topics are quite often very well explained and good schematics are provided too sometimes.Amazing how the technical Swedish is reasonable understandable as well.

I like the old Hawkins Electrical guide, second edition 1921. and Audells new Electric library 1929 which I bought the complete series off for about 40$NZ. 27$UStotal 20 books!! outside of the pages are covered in gold.Second hand bookshops are the best places to source these old books if one is interested.

This exact method was used in the USA well into the '20s. I remember seeing this in one of my favorite restaurants in Connecticut when I lived there. It fed about 20 cleat lampholders above the front door, and was still in use!

"In the early days of electric lighting in houses, wooden casing and capping was the universal method of protection and support. So long as sufficient "ways" were used, and the surroundings were dry, joints were avoided and wires kept separated, the system was fairly satisfactory, although it obviously did not decrease the the fire risk of buildings in which it was used. When wires were "bunched" into the grooves, often as many as could be crammed therein, irrespective of polarity, and the casing was omitted at corners and under plaster and so forth, the system became positively dangerous. At the best of times there was a temptation to omit careful mitreing of the casing under floorboards, in cellars, and other semi-concealed positions, with the result that somewhat inadequately protected conductors were exposed to all kinds of atmospheric and other influences. Also, in any case, the erection of casing and capping called for a good deal of time and skill; given these it made a presentable job. In addition to being an electrician, the wireman had to be a carpenter. Considerable ingenuity was requisite where wires crossed and the "ways" approaching a distribution box made an imposing array of woodwork, if anything approaching the ideal of "one wire, one way" was to be achieved. Because the system lent itself to scamped erection and was not damp or vermin proof, it has practically disappeared for new work, its place being taken by steel conduit, or one of the special systems, of which there are now quite a number."

Well, it's practically the 'same' English used today, with some words now rarely used, plus grammatical changes; we tend to omit a comma before 'and' now.

William Caxton also wrote:"Thereore, I, William Caxton, a symple person, have endevored me to wryte fyrst over all the said Book of Polycronycon, and sommewhat have changed the rude and old Englisshe that is to wéte, Certain words which in these days be neither usyd ne understanden."[Printed some time after 1474/5, when he set up his first press.]

Caxton left England for Bruges in 1446 at the age of 24, and returned in 1476 when he was 54. So after spending two generations out of contact with English "as she is spoke", the changes must have been some shock! Bear in mind too that he is writing for a very small and rich audience- I suspect Tom Plowman and his kin carried on talking in their own old vernacular, far away from the thin atmosphere of the ivory towers for a few generations after.The massive language changes might have had something to do with the Black Death, (pneumonic and bubonic plagues), which decimated Europe in the middle ages. In 1347-50 and 1360-61 and at times after, this disease carried off around a quarter of the populace, predominantly the elderly and the poor. The effects are reckoned to have been greater than a nuclear war would have now- Englands population collapsed from 3,700,000 in 1346 to 2,100,000 by 1400.

PS. I got an e-mail last week from my neice in England. It was written in 'text'[mobile phone speak]. Old tite, ere wi go agen!